Irony is a human concept
by This is My Truth Tell Me Yours
Summary: Spock and Saru beam down to the surface of a desolate planet for a short scientific away mission. But things don't exactly go according to plan... Set between the events of red angel and the next episode.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: The ideas are mine, the characters are not

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"_First Officer's log, stardate 2258.5 _

_Discovery has encountered the red angel. While Captain Pike is attempting to verify her story in a nearby system, Commander Spock and myself have beamed down to the surface of Galen VI, two and a half light years away. Beneath the layers of ice that cover this small world there is a rich fungal ecosystem. Our mission is to collect samples and take them back to the ship. Lt. Stamets believes we can use some of the rare species indigenous to this planet to enhance the capabilities of the spore drive."_

Saru was standing several meters away from Spock while the Vulcan checked on the fungi collecting systems the two of them had set up a few minutes earlier. The filtering system was slow and there was still one standard hour to go at least before they could beam up to the ship again. In any case, Discovery was no longer in orbit. Captain Pike would come back for them around the time they were done collecting samples. _And hopefully,_ _not a minute later_, Saru thought, with a sense of unease. The thought of being forgotten and trapped in that frozen planet sent a shiver down his spine.

Galen VI was a desolate world. There was ice and snow as far as his eyes could reach. Had they beamed down somewhere closer to the Equator they might have stumbled upon one of the many nomadic tribes of humanoids that populated the planet, but Spock had calculated their landing coordinates carefully as to avoid that possibility. Now, standing alone on that mountainside, merely a few steps away from a frozen cliff, Saru wished the Vulcan had been less careful. Not that he intended to contact any of the natives… They were, after all, in a stage of development comparable to Earth's Bronze Age, and the Prime Directed applied. Still, Saru would have liked to see one of those tribes, making their way through the ice in the valley below. He would have liked to see someone. Even from a distance. Ahead of him, the snow stretched for miles, as far as his eyes could see. The vastness of those barren lands was… unsettling. It made him feel dreadfully small. And lonely. He wished Michael could have beamed down with him, or Tilly, or even Lt. Stamets. But the Captain had decided on Spock, whose coldness and detachment did not do anything to mitigate Saru's feelings.

In many ways, Spock reminded Saru of Michael when they first met. The distant attitude. The silent awareness of their surroundings. The straightforward replies and short sentences. The things that one first notices when interacting with a Vulcan… Because that's what she was when they first met. A Vulcan, by upbringing and by choice, if not by blood. In many ways, she was still a Vulcan, except perhaps that she was easier with a smile…

As he watched Spock adjusting the settings of the filtering system, however, he realized that there was more to it than that. The way he stood, with his hands behind his back, the way he raised a single eyebrow when he was puzzled, even the inflections his voice adopted when he spoke… All of those small things were just like Michael. Saru doubted either of them was even aware of it. To the Kelpian's eyes, however, it was clear that they were siblings.

A waft of wind blew from the east, and he took his hands to the place where his ganglia used to be, in the back of his head. It was almost a reflex, touching the smooth surface of his occipital bone. _Old habits die hard_, he thought, whenever his fingers failed to meet his ganglia at that point. Then he looked away again, and there, only a few metres away from where they were, he realized the wind had uncovered something. He couldn't tell exactly what it was at first, but there was definitely something sticking up from the snow covered ground.

Those were flowers.

They were beautiful. The petals had a beautiful colour, a nearly transparent shade of blue. They almost looked like crystals at first, but they were soft to the touch, as Saru realized after conducting his initial scans with a tricorder and reaching out to feel the petals in his hand. They moved, even before he touched them, in a sort of delicate and beautiful dance that helped to brush away the snow that covered them, and expose the flowers to the sun. The kelpian kneeled down to examine the crystalline green of the stem of the flower, but as soon as he leaned in he felt the petals of one of the flowers on his face, with a warm soft touch that might have been the touch of a friend. He couldn't help but close his eyes and smile.

When he opened his eyes, he noticed Spock was watching him.

Saru felt incredibly self-conscious for a moment.

"I understand you take an interest in botany," Spock mentioned, looking away from the flowers.

Saru took a second to get himself back together.

"Indeed. I grow several species of flowers in my quarters. But those are Kelpian flowers, mostly… I have nothing quite like these," he said, touching the flowers and watching the way the light went through it's crystalline petals. He seemed rather mesmerized by it. "My flowers remind me of home…. The best parts of it."

" My mother told me something similar once. She took several species of Earth plants with her when she moved to Vulcan. There was a greenhouse in our backyard."

"Was it difficult?"

Spock raised an eyebrow, as if he didn't understand the question.

"For your mother,"Saru added, "growing Earth flowers on Vulcan?"

"Yes," Spock answered. "She had samples of Earth soil sent to Vulcan, and she was careful to maintain proper levels of humidity, aeration and electrolyte concentrations"

"I have similar difficulties. Fredalias don't grow quite so well on a Starship as they do on the wild in Kaminar. It's the way of things, I think… The only creatures that flourish on a starship are the ones that suffocate and shrivel on the wild…"

It had been that way with him, after all, and Michael, and a handful of others he had met in his brief life. _Perhaps it was so with Spock,_ he thought. But if the Vulcan noticed the implications of Saru's musings, he chose to ignore them.

"Perhaps you could take some of these flowers back, to study on board discovery. However, I do not know whether you could grow them on the ship. I never took an interest in gardening. I suspect it would have pleased my mother if I did, though."

Saru nodded.

"I wish Michael could see them. They are her favourite, after all."

"It is unlikely that Lt. Burnham has ever encountered this particular species of plant before."

"Not these ones precisely," Saru waved, dismissing the statement, "but they are blue… She likes blue flowers."

Spock looked Saru for a moment, and something seemed to shift in his expression, whatever it was, though, it only lasted a moment.

"I am sure you know her better than I do," Spock said simply, but even as he turned his back on the kelpian, his mind was flooded with memories…

He remember a time when he was very small, shortly after Michael first moved to Vulcan. They were spending time in Amanda's greenhouse. Neither Spock not Michael had asked permission to be there, so they had to be very quiet. They were playing, pretending they were scientists in an expedition, taking notes on the exotic species of plants of many faraway planets. It was Michael who taught Spock to make-believe like that. Vulcan children didn't do that. They didn't know about it. He enjoyed it enormously.

At some point, when they were standing in front of Amanda's roses, Michael stopped.

"I have never seen roses like these," she said, reaching out to touch the petals of the flower, before she added, "blue roses."

"They are my favourite kind," Spock said.

"Why?"

"Blue roses don't exist in nature," the little boy said, reaching out to one of the boxes and picking up one of the petals that had fallen down on the soil. He took the petal close to his nose and closed his eyes for a moment, so he could appreciate the scent of the flower, "it's a mutation. So they are of Earth, and not of Earth at the same time."

Michael didn't anything for a while. But she understood.

"They are beautiful," she said, finally.

He took her hand and placed the petal on her open palm.

"They can be your favourite too, if you want."

She closed her hand, the blue petal still inside it, and just like that, they resumed their game.

They had never spoken of it again. The window of time during which Spock and Michael behaved like brother and sister had been so brief… Her hardly ever thought about it anymore. He didn't even know he still had those memories, prior to Saru bringing up the topic of blue flowers. That Michael liked them or not however, Spock thought firmly, meant nothing at all. Twenty years is a long time. And a childhood memory is, after all, only a memory.

Saru opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, both he and Spock felt the earth tremble under their feet

"What was that?" Saru asked, while both of them punched data into their tricorders, scanning the mountainside.

"A magmatic quake?" Spock ventured

"I have been around a lot of volcanoes," Saru added, "that didn't feel magmatic to me."

"What do you suggest?"

The earth trembled once more.

"Get the gear, commander; we have to leave this place right now."

Just as Spock closed the briefcase with the filtering system and the samples they had already collected, they felt another shake, but this time it was much stronger, and above them a column of smoke and fire was ejected into the air, from the mouth of the volcano.

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A/N: This is going to be a short multichapter fic (only about three or four chapters, I think)... It's the first thing I have written with Discovery characters, and I would appreciate some feedback. It has not been beta read as I have not been able to find a beta yet.

Please review


	2. Chapter 2

Author's note: The ideas are mine, the characters are not

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Spock didn't even see what hit him when Saru grabbed his arm and pushed him down on the snow. The Kelpian dived, pulling Spock with him, and before he knew they were sliding fast down the icy mountainside, gaining speed with every metre, as the mountain continued to explode.

Lava however, was impossible to outrun. Saru knew that, and he located a gap on the side of the mountain, almost like a cave in which they could hide because the entrance was protected in such a way that the lava would fall around it and slide down, sparing the inside of the cave. He managed to pull himself up and Spock with him, just in the nick of time.

The burning lava missed them for less than an inch. Protected as they were by the rocks, the could still feel the radiating heat from the magma, invading their improvised refuge and turning their cheeks red. The landscape had changed. Wherever they looked, everything was red.

They were trapped inside that cave. And there was nothing they could do except to sit and watch.

It took hours for the lava to stop rushing down the mountain.

"Discovery should be back at any moment now," Saru said, after a while. The lava was so incandescent they had shed their outer coats on a corner of the cave. Spock had established they managed to collect 30% of the fungi Lt. Stammets had requested, but there was nothing more they could do. They would have to go back to the ship and figure out another way to enhance the spore drive. Besides, Saru and Spock had other concerns now.

"It is possible they already are on orbit," Spock answered.

He had been recording readings of the lava with his tricorder for a while, and now he was attempting to use his communicator, without success.

"I believe there are heavy metals on the lava that are interfering with communications."

"So even if they are in orbit we won't be able to talk to the ship."

"Precisely," Spock agreed, "And they can't scan for our biosignals because of the ash."

"What about a shuttle?"

"They would have to wait for the atmosphere to clear."

Saru looked melancholic.

"I can build a beacon to help the ship find us," Spock said. "I could use our tricorders and comunicators to fashion a concentrate energy beam…"

"But," Saru interrupted, "if the metals in the lava interfere with electromagnetic radiation, we would have to get away from the lava for the beam to have a chance to work."

"We could stay and wait for the ash to clear," Spock powdered, "but that could take weeks."

"And we don't have enough rations. We would starve to death."

"On the other hand—"

"On the other hand," Saru interrupted, "out there the air is volcanic ash, the ice and whatever water there was have turned to acid, there might be rivers of burning lava and there's always the danger that the mountain will blow up again."

They were silent for a moment. They prospects were incredibly bleak."

"I believe humans have an expression for this…" Spock started, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

Saru sighed


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's note: The ideas are mine, the characters are not**_

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They had been walking for nearly a day. The plan was simple: They had to put enough distance between themselves and the heavy metals in the lava. Then, they would set up a beacon, so Discovery could find them.

The only way to get away from the lava was to walk. It was dangerous. Any moment now the volcano could unleash the violence of a pyroclastic cloud, and if Spock and Saru were out in the open when the cloud hit, they would not survive. There was no way they could outrun a pyroclastic cloud. If they had stayed in the cave on the mountainside, they might have been safe, but Discovery would not be able to find them. It was equally possible that the cave would collapse and they would be trapped.

In either case, they did not have much time. There was no food in the cave and whatever plants and animals there might have been outside had been destroyed by the lava. Nobody brings more than a couple of emergency rations for a mission that was only supposed to last a few hours. If they did not find a way back to the ship soon, they would starve. On the other hand, perhaps it would not come to that. Even as they walked, they were aware that their environmental suits were not insulated enough for the volcanic winter that dawned in what was already a frozen world. If Discovery took too long to find them, they might freeze to death.

There did not seem to be any good choices.

Neither of them spoke much on the way. Spock seemed to prefer it that way. Saru went behind him, flapping his long arms behind his back as he walked, the way Kelpians did, for balance. The first few miles were not particularly difficult. It was simply a matter of waking down the mountain. The snow was now covered in solidified magma, and everything that had been white before had turned grey. Some of the rocks were not stable enough though, and at some point nearly three miles away from where they started, Spock tripped. He would have slid down the rest of the way on his chest if it hadn't been for Saru's firm grip on his arm.

Spock's heart was racing. An involuntary autonomic response, of course, but an inconvenient one nonetheless. He felt Saru's grip tightening around his arm while he struggled to find his footing again. The Kelpian had large hands, and a strength that probably paralleled his own, and that surprised him. It took him a minute to understand that uninvited emotion. Then it occurred to him that he was accustomed to being around humans. Spock had been in Starfleet for many years now. Wherever he went, humans, none of whom could match his physical attributes, surrounded him. A human would not be able to grab his arm like that. That was why he was surprised. He acknowledged those thoughts, watched as that bolt of emotion faded away, as quickly as it had occurred to him, and looked back at the other officer.

"Thank you."

Saru smiled.

"One does not thank logic," the Kelpian replied, "but you are very welcom."

Spock raised his left eyebrow.

"Have you studied the writings of Kiri-kin-tha?"

"Yes," Saru replied, as they continued their way down the mountain, "it was one of the first books Michael recommended me when she first boarded the Shenzhou. She was keen on introducing me to the philosophy of her… the philosophies she had grown up with."

"Michael is not a Vulcan." Spock said sharply.

Saru studied his fellow officer's back for a moment before he decided on what to say back.

"Perhaps not," he said finally, " but she was the closest thing that I had."

Spock didn't say anything back. They went on walking, until they finally reached a lake. It was so wide they couldn't possibly walk around it. Their best hope would be to cross the river, but as Spock promptly observe the eruption had probably increased the acidity in the water, and in fact, the lake was so acid now it would probably peel their skin off before they reached the other margin if they tried to swim across the water. It could not be done.

Saru found a small boat over what looked like it had been a peer in the recent past. The boat was under a thick layer of volcanic ash, but it had been spared of the lava, and they could probably use it to get to the other side. They used the oars at first and when those were gone, Saru came up with the idea of wrapping his hands with the jacket of his environmental suit and paddle to the other margins. Spock did the same. They managed to get out of the boat just before the acid dug a hole in the bottom and it sank.

"It was a shame we had to sacrifice the jackets," Saru said, rubbing his arms with his hands.

"We needed to cross the lake," Spock said simply.

Saru appreciated that. Most of the people he had known would mourn the loss of the jackets and complain of the cold. Spock however, saw things differently. It had been logical to use the jackets to survive. Now they had to move on and it would be illogical to complain about environmental conditions they had no control over. It was, Saru thought, a simpler way of looking at the world… He had heard people complaining that Vulcans were cold hearted. That was not what he was experiencing, however. Spock's words actually made him feel better.

"You are cold," Spock noted, "if you took an interest in the wisdom of Kiri-kin-tha, there are meditation techniques I could show you that will assist you in enduring the cold. It would not take long."

_Not cold hearted at all_, Saru thought.

"Yes, please," he said finally. His lips were already turning purple.


End file.
